26.9.16

Emir Kusturica stories reflect Balkan identity and spirit.

The relationship between literature and nationality
has always been a symbiotic one, but the power of personal style would appear
to be the most prevalent, the significant element that makes a writer be gifted
and witty. On the occasion of Emir Kusturica, his stories Étranger dans le mariage, (2014)-translated into Greek by Alexis
Emmanouil and edited by the publishing house Utopia in 2016-are reflective of
the attempt to understand just how much the global and international relations’
environment has affected Balkan identity and manners throughout the years.

The literature of Emir Kusturica aims to incite us to
sympathize with people in trouble by elucidating how active and real they are.
This happens partly because it may make us realize what is going on better, as
we have already known the key story, the rhythm of our life, too. So, whereas
we are all viewers of uncontrolled things and live in times of both conflict
and terror, the only thing with which we have been so familiar is the human
behavior. Kusturica has studied it even as a filmmaker to such an extent that
his writing becomes a mirror of noise, paradox, irony and introspection in
order to explore our private anxieties.

Take for example
the life of Aleksa, the young character that is going to be evolved and become
mature after having taken life incidents into further consideration. In the
beginning he is worried about reading books but in the end he has realized
their value in the daily life. Although he is in between difficulties, he
overcomes the obstacles by possessing something extra; this is the critical
eye, the witty humor, the performance. Hence, Aleksa represents the need to
abolish the language of the society and its clichés; the congealed language
does not encourage introspection, therefore Kusturica has invested both
innocence and cleverness on this character so as to create another communicable
reality in terms of writing.

The door to
subjectivism also enhances the objective idea of common beliefs in the stories
of Emir Kusturica. In them, Kusturica tackles the real issue behind the
controversy. The noise as an outcome of the pursuit of the experience tends to
be necessary in the narrative of the Balkan background. In this sense, the
noise element could be connected with even deeper truths and circumstances; it
could appear as the war shadow, the conflict face, the key that opens the door
of Balkan adaptability into life. In
other words, a Balkan story cannot be convincing enough without any noise
existence.

As regards the
paradox issue in Emir Kusturica stories, the family life portrays it exactly in
order to question the social framework and show the delicate points. The family
members play their roles but this does not happen by chance. The important
thing for the readers is to localize the problem and the character’s
addictiveness. There the humor starts, when the bad point has been diagnosed.
However, Kusturica is more closely concerned with reality than moral realism.
This is the reason why he does not make any statements about the bad habits. He
is just interested in the paradox ‘‘movie’’ as a real filmmaker who writes his
snapshots.

In the framework of
irony, all the stories depict a clear tendency to focus on the importance of
the accidental as if it happened for good. For instance, the character Kosta
was saved by a snake’s hug. Also, the parents of Aleksa suffered from mishaps
that happened accidentally. Even more, the habit of Brako-the father of Aleksa-to
hide the money is a gesture that recalls the accidental literature reality in
order to provoke irony and noise, as being part of a game. In relation to the
latter, all the stories’ characters seem to belong to a sequel of interactivity
that arouses strange incidents.

On the other hand,
the introspection process takes place in a strong alliance with nature. Not by
chance does Kusturica recall nature and mention natural names. The tragicomic
picture of life is connected with natural snapshots from Sarajevo, the city of
complex realities and disconcerting occasions. More specifically, here the
nature seems to fill the gap of communication as an objective world of
information and interpretation. As to introspection, this enables the writer to
bring the hidden content into the open so that the readers can view it and feel
sympathy for the characters by recognizing partially traits of their own
behavior.

In conclusion, although we live
in a world that has lost every metaphysical connotation, the stories of Emir
Kusturica make the readers rediscover the essence of life. In terms of writing
and reading, we can explore the power to be alive by keeping a valuable
distance from the thing itself. The experiences that build a character and
strengthen life consciousness can be examined through a new perspective in
order to learn through the various mirror effects. The events that surround the
characters of Kusturica and especially his leading one, Aleksa, represent all
understandable sides of a conflict in order not only to report the problem but
elucidate our oblivion about its roots. The
short but prompt dialogues help a lot towards this direction, whereas the
natural landscapes from story to story contribute to the realistic narrative by
introducing objective universal notions of the world.